I’m wondering if it possible to take advantage of CoreAnimation in AppleScript Studio for my almost-finished-app that I’m polishing up now.
My situation is that I’d like to add a nice transition to my TableViews, so that when a data row is added to their data source, and they update, the new row fades in, instead of just appearing. Also I’d like to have the opposite effect for when a data row is deleted, so it fades out.
I thought I might be able to do that by applying the ‘Order in’ and ‘Order out’ transitions for the NSTextFieldCell class inside my TableView, but CoreAnimation doesn’t appear to be available to my Inspector in Interface Builder.
Anyone got any tips on how I might accomplish this?
I don’t have a practical answer to this, but consider from a user standpoint: Is fading in really necessary? Is the data just appearing such a bad thing? How long is the fade in going to take, will the user be worried if they don’t see it showing up as soon as they press the OK/Enter button? There has been much balleyhoo about how Adobe CS3 suite fades in/out when the user enters/leaves the application, and most of the commenters agree it would just be better to leave out the extra codes and just have it show up soon as they come/go. Many are power users and fade time means waiting instead of getting to their work.
My personal opinion is that fading is cool but probably unnecessary. If I ever had to wait for my app to get done its fading while I was in a big rush I’d get mad quick. Now if this is a media/video/audio/slideshow app that is meant to be used/viewed leisurely or at a fixed pace then maybe this is not an issue.
I totally agree with you, the animations in any UI should never get in the way of using the application.
I only plan really to use very subtle fades, or perhaps other transitions, that would not get in the way at all, but would just add that extra something to the look and feel.